Essays on the Christian Contemplative Journey Review Bernadette Roberts

Bernadette Roberts

1931–2017

IN OUR Opinion, Bernadette Roberts is 1 of the most important spiritual authors of all time because:

1. She was fully self-realized. In other words, she reached the state known as manonasha in Hinduism, which she called "no-self."

2. Her books describe this state and her path with extraordinary clarity and precision.

In her view, loss of ego and loss of cocky are two different stages. She calls loss of ego the "unitive country". In that land, the ego is gone but it has been replaced by a different middle of conciousness, i that involves unity with God or all that is. At that phase, consciousness, cocky, and God still exist. There is a sense of nonduality but it is a nonduality of identity betwixt a center and any is outside the center. There is still an inner and outer.

The second stage, which she calls no-self and Hindus call manonasha, is much more radical. Self, consciousness, and God autumn away completely and no centre remains; at that place is no knowing in the ordinary sense and no inner feel. This second stage is the real enlightenment.

Most of the people who talk about enlightenment and awakening on the Internet are talking about the first stage. Nigh of them don't realize that the 2nd stage exists, fifty-fifty though some famous teachers like Ramana Maharshi are examples of it and focused on it in their teachings. Bernadette herself didn't realize that the second stage exists until it happened to her, and she was astonished past information technology.

The reason many seekers and spiritual teachers are unaware of the being of the second phase is because when they hear about it, they misinterpret the words and think they are being told almost the first phase which they know to some extent experientially. One of the primary purposes of this website is to tell people that the ii stages are unlike, and that the ordinary kind of enlightenment is not the aforementioned thing as Cocky-realization. This was likewise one of the main purposes of Bernadette's books and lectures.

Bernadette came to Cocky-realization through the Cosmic wistful tradition, post-obit the teachings of Saint John of the Cantankerous, and when she brutal into the no-cocky country, it came every bit a complete surprise because, she said, nothing in Catholic tradition mentions such a land. She then looked for information nearly this country in Buddhist and Hindu literature but could non observe annihilation there either. She has been criticized and ridiculed for claiming that Hinduism and Buddhism practice non depict this state (of course they practice, it is the country that Ramana Maharshi was in), simply she defended herself as follows:

From the beginning, the sole purpose of my writing has been to put into the contemplative literature an entire stage and final upshot (the no-self event) that presently is not in that location. Despite objections to the contrary, this particular stage and final event have not been accounted for in our contemplative literature, East or West. To search a hundred or more than classics in the field and discover simply a few hidden suggestions of such an issue is not sufficient. My affirming that information technology is not in the literature, nonetheless, has been the crusade of some ridicule. The impression is that I am illiterate, have no formal knowledge of the path, or am totally ignorant of the available classics. The whole problem is that until we come upon this final event we do not know information technology is missing from the literature; thus we have no way of knowing what, specifically, to look for. In other words, until nosotros know first hand or by experience exactly what to expect for, we are non in a position to judge whether or not this event is in the literature.

The challenge of providing such an account is what my writing is about. Attesting to the difficulty of this challenge is the fact that my commencement two books failed in this thing, and then here, now, is a third effort. I might add, the fact this book was not acceptable to a trade publisher farther demonstrates the difficulty of putting the no-self event into the literature. Information technology may exist that for centuries our various censors take eliminated any event they did not sympathize or which they thought also upsetting to their clientele. I can merely speculate virtually this.

[From What is Self, Introduction.]

Since she couldn't find an acceptable vocabulary or theoretical framework in any tradition to describe her experience, she invented her own. She did this by taking terms and concepts from Christianity and the Catholic contemplative tradition and repurposing them.

Just she didn't say she was repurposing them. Instead she said she was explicating their real meaning. For case, in her last book, The Real Christ, she says that the give-and-take "Christ" doesn't hateful what Christians think information technology ways. What it really means, she said, is a union of God's human nature and God's divine nature which takes place inside human beings.

At that place is a lot of this sort of matter in her books, and it turns them into a peculiar mixture of testimony about her state and tendentious rewriting of Christian theology. This probably puts off many Christians considering they get offended by Bernadette'south heretical views, and bores many non-Christians because they take no dog in that fight. But if you tin can lay such reactions aside and view her vocabulary and concepts equally tools through which she conveys data to you lot about the no-self country, the result will be worth it.

A proposition for Christian readers of her books: exist open to the possibility that she understands Christ ameliorate than some of the people who wrote the dogmas of your church building. And a suggestion for non-Christians: make the effort to understand her ideas and vocabulary. You can do this and recognize the truth of what she says without becoming a Christian in a sectarian sense.

Personal life

Therese Bernadette Roberts was born on May 20, 1931 in Los Angeles to Marcus Leo Roberts and Mary Gertrude Roberts (née Stewart). She entered the Monastery of Discalced Carmelites in Alhambra, California, in January 1949 and left eight years later. In 1961 she married Ronald Charles Danko with whom she had four children. She divorced him on Feb 2, 1973 afterwards 11 years of spousal relationship on grounds of extreme cruelty. She died on November 27, 2017 following a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Bibliography

We list her books in the social club in which she wrote them. Many sites listing them in order of the years in which current editions were published, but that is misleading because some of her books have gone through several editions from different publishers..

The Experience of No-Self: A Contemplative Journey (1982)

Alhough this was her first book it turned out to be the third volume of her autobiography. It describes a ii year menstruum in her late 30s during which she lost all sense of cocky. Nosotros would call this process self-realization but she calls it the falling abroad of the unitive state and true self (not the ego, which in her terminology cruel away at an earlier phase). The current revised edition was published in 1993.

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The Path to No-Self: Life at the Center (1985)

The second function of Roberts's autobiography, starting at age 17. It covers a period of xx years, beginning with the Dark Night of the Spirit (falling away of the ego-center) and describing the unitive state.

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What is Self? A Report of the Spiritual Journey in Terms of Consciousness (1989)

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Essays on the Christian Contemplative Journey (2007)

Republished in 2017 as The Christian Contemplative Journey: Essays on the Path.

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Wistful: Autobiography of the Early Years (2014)

The first part of Roberts's autobiography, describing her life from birth until age 17.

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The Real Christ (2017)

Roberts's theological ideas about the true nature of Christ and God.

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Bernadette Roberts in the 1970s or 1980s

A Quotation

The true nature of cocky can only exist fully disclosed when it is gone, when there is no self. One outcome, then, of the no-self experience is the disclosure of the truthful nature of self or consciousness. As it turns out, self is the unabridged system of consciousness, from the unconscious to God-consciousness, the entire dimension of human being knowing and feeling-experiencing. Considering the terms "self" and "consciousness" express the same experiences (nothing tin can be said of ane that cannot exist said of the other), they are just definable in terms of "experience." Every other definition is theorize and speculation. No-self, and so, means no-consciousness. If this is shocking to some people, information technology is only because they exercise non know the true nature of consciousness. Sometimes we go and so caught up in the content of consciousness, we forget that consciousness is also a somatic function of the physical body, and, similar every such part, it is not eternal. Peradventure nosotros would do better searching for the divine in our bodies than among the content and experiences of consciousness.

(From The Experience of No-Self.)

Related pages on this site

The Experience of No-Self

This interview of Bernadette Roberts, conducted past Stephen Bodian in 1986 for Yoga Periodical, summarizes her volume The Feel of No-Self

Links

Recommended Books

The Experience of No-Self

By Bernadette Roberts

"This is an extraordinary account of our journey with God. In information technology, Bernadette talks of a milestone in the spiritual life that lies beyond spousal relationship with God. Later on years of living a life united with God and given completely to God, she comes upon an effect in which the entire self falls away. At that place is now no union, no center, and strictly speaking no feel at all. What remains is Christ and the Resurrection and a knowing (without subject) that to me speaks of the beginning of a beatific vision of God--a vision without mediator. In The Path to No-Self Berndette writes of the first part of our journey – the transformation where God replaces self at the very middle of being. She speaks of this equally the falling abroad of ego distinct from the later on falling away of cocky. In What is Self a work that I promise will be printed once again she speaks in much greater detail well-nigh what is known after the no-self event – about God, self, Christ, the Trinity and the Incarnation. There is no truer account of the spiritual life than these works by Bernadette Roberts. They profoundly illuminate the truth of the Christian revelation, and also provide insights for contemplatives of all backgrounds."

—rb (an Amazon reviewer)

See it on Amazon.

The Path to No-Self

By Bernadette Roberts

"This lucid and unfailingly honest business relationship of the process of coming to terms with the loss of "self" is just a grace for those with ears to hear. Ms. Roberts, a former nun, has walked the wistful path to the betoken where information technology disappears into nowhere then, remarkably enough, kept walking. Her personal experiences and reflections on the journeying are invaluable to those traveling a similar road; along with the writings of St. John of the Cross, her books (I include "The Experience of No-Cocky" as well) are simply the most nourishing of mana for those lost in the desert of God, equally well as for those who have lived in the desert and are beingness called at last back to the urban center. The straightforwardness of her writing and her contemporary reality are a blessing. No one tells information technology like it is about the dark night of the soul improve than Bernadette Roberts, and her books have been sustaining companions to me for almost twenty years. They were all I could read, at many points. These are not books for scholar; these are books for those in the grip of the existent matter."

—An Amazon Customer

Run into it on Amazon.

What Is Self?

By Bernadette Roberts

"So pleased to have connected with this very unusual offering. Roberts spends the first half of the book explaining in great particular – sometimes tediously, only in the stop thoroughly and with stunning insight – the nature of all cocky identity – Small Self, Large Self, or equally some refer to it, True Cocky and consciousness. Her conclusion is that they are all temporary, mutually supporting constructs that fall away every bit one matures along the human being journey. Her description of the "no cocky" status - her ability to describe "no self" to readers who assume their identity equally being the ane absolutely, irreducible, "personal" accessory is an amazing accomplishment. Beyond unitive consciousness, Roberts describes conditions of pure knowing without a knower. And not as some have led us to believe - non God realized, omniscient knowing. Instead a knowing that includes the sober realization that all that has been previously "known" was really and unavoidably, mere self reflection. Roberts, now in her seventies is described past those who know her as, "A Force Of Nature."

—Thomas Carroll (an Amazon reviewer)

Run across it on Amazon.

This page was published on Apr 27, 2020 and last revised on May 31, 2020.

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Source: https://realization.org/p/bernadette-roberts/bernadette-roberts.html

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